Website Critique

Gaverick

Gaverick

Gaverick

Associate
Joined
21 Jan 2006
Posts
2,171
Location
Seaham, Co. Durham
Hi Guys,

I've asked you to critique another of the sites I designed before and you gave some really helpful advice so I'm back again.

I've just finished designing the main page of a website and would like to hear your views on anything that is wrong, could look better, etc before I go ahead and finish the rest of the pages.

The site is at: http://www.dur.ac.uk/g.s.laverick/alderclad/

Thanks for your help.
 
Just had a look at the site :)

The first thing that popped out at me was the company logo. IE6 can't handle the PNG you're using because it's probably got transparency, so you'd need to change that.

Also on IE6, there's a pretty sizable chunk of white-space between the bottom of the last paragraph and the top of image of the company premises, which isn't there on Firefox.

Also, this might just be me, but the first thing that caught my eye when I loaded the site was the animated banner and I sat there and wondered why I was looking at a garage front, a roof and a huge expanse of warehouse wall. If possible, maybe try and find a way to sell the company and advertise its services to potential clients by using the pulling power of that banner :)
 
kkbigal said:
Just had a look at the site :)

The first thing that popped out at me was the company logo. IE6 can't handle the PNG you're using because it's probably got transparency, so you'd need to change that.

Also on IE6, there's a pretty sizable chunk of white-space between the bottom of the last paragraph and the top of image of the company premises, which isn't there on Firefox.

Also, this might just be me, but the first thing that caught my eye when I loaded the site was the animated banner and I sat there and wondered why I was looking at a garage front, a roof and a huge expanse of warehouse wall. If possible, maybe try and find a way to sell the company and advertise its services to potential clients by using the pulling power of that banner :)
Click to expand...

Oh yeah forgot to say that banner isn't the final piece, just waiting on some better images to use.

I don't have IE6 installed so I'll get that and try and sort those other issues, thanks a lot for the advice!
 
Solaris said:
Why do people still use IE6?
Click to expand...

I agree with your sentiment but not much we can do about it; there are still a lot of people out there that still use it.

I personally use Firefox exclusively now and only use IE (6 or 7) to test cross-browser compatibility.
 
Ok I think I've sorted those few IE6 niggles, could anybody verify for me as I still don't have IE6 running!
 
Tidy.!

I think it may be good to have a space between the colons and first numbers in the contact details and maybe an email link up there as well?

As for the main picture, I would shoot that head on.
 
seaviewuk said:
I think it may be good to have a space between the colons and first numbers in the contact details
Click to expand...

Ah yes that's a good idea.

seaviewuk said:
maybe an email link up there as well?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately the company doesn't use a single contact email, rather each member of staff has their own separate email address and these will be listed elsewhere on the site.
 
Gaverick said:
Ok I think I've sorted those few IE6 niggles, could anybody verify for me as I still don't have IE6 running!
Click to expand...

It's easy to do, grab a copy of the free Microsoft Virtual PC, download the IE6 XP image (google it) and test away. There's also one for IE8 for future proofing.

Either that or use something like browsershots.org
 
It's not possible for the viewer to get the browser to make the text larger or smaller than your default sizes, and the photos are uninspiring to say the least... If nothing else can you add a pale blue gradient to the sky on the office shot?
 
Just some initial comments :)

- Default font size is a bit small, felt the need to manually resize it almost straight away - you could make the default a bit bigger and maybe add an option for the user to choose their preferred font size, i.e. 'Preferred font size: A A A' and make sure it is easy to find.

- In the banner 'Industrial Cladding & Roofing' is hard to read - make it a bit darker so it's easier to see what the site is for :)

- The red header text for 'Company Profile' might look better if it is bold. I'm undecided - you could try and see what you think looks better :)

The page looks quite clean and functional.
 
The site itself looks dated, like it's from the 90's, the way you've designed your content isn't very enganging and the overall presentation looks very lazy. The nav is huge and there is a ton of wasted space underneath/around it. The photo is unecessecarily big, and, it's not very good either. The horizontal lines background is also unnatractive, and massively overused. I think because you're also working with such a terrible logo it's going to be a bit harder to achieve a nice looking site, however I would strip it back to basics. You might even be able to get away with some 'web 2.0' styling if you do it classy enough, the current isn't working though.
 
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